Paging and tracking are important procedures to operate a network. That is, in order to provide services to the wireless communication device, the network needs to know the location of a wireless communication device such as a mobile terminal, user equipment or the like.
During the tracking and paging procedures the wireless communication devices periodically activate in order to determine a tracking area and to receive a paging message. Paging is for instance used for network initiated connection set up. For instance, when the wireless communication device is in an idle state, e.g. Radio Resource Control RRC-idle state for Long Term Evolution LTE, the wireless communication device camps and monitors for instance the L1/L2 control signaling for paging messages.
Typically paging is carried out on a paging cycle wherein the wireless communication device is not monitoring any channels for paging messages and only wakes up for a limited amount of time in the paging cycle in order to accept paging messages.
The so-called on-duration where the wireless communication device is awaiting a paging message, defines the amount of resources used for paging on the side of the wireless communication device. The overall paging cycle, i.e. the repetition frequency of the on-duration, is for instance for LTE set to a maximum of 2.5 seconds. It is the aim for future applications or future networks to increase the paging cycles for instance up to 24 hours for specific applications. This would lead to lowering the use of resources, i.e. lowering energy consumption of the wireless communication device.
On the network side, the service area is divided in tracking areas for locating a wireless communication device. In order to provide respective services to the wireless communication device the network tracks the wireless communication device using the paging procedure. Typically a tracking area configuration for the wireless communication device is controlled by a network entity such as a mobility management entity, MME. That is, since the location of the wireless communication device is typically not known to the network, the paging procedure uses the paging message transmitted across several cells in one or more tracking areas. When the wireless communication device periodically wakes up according to the paging procedure and determines which tracking area it is currently located in, the wireless communication device subsequently notifies the network and/or the network entity about its current location. For instance in case the tracking area is not in a predefined allowed tracking area list, the wireless communication device initiates a location area update procedure in order to inform the network of its current location.
The wireless communication device can be configured with a list of tracking areas it can move in-between, while in idle mode. This subsequently reduces the number of location area updates the wireless communication device has to perform.
Typically the paging procedure includes performing paging in a smaller area, e.g. one cell up to several cells, and subsequently, if the wireless communication device is not found in the small area, the network performs paging the wireless communication device in a larger area, e.g. all cells in the tracking area list.